Nevada Irrigation District (NID) provides irrigation water for agriculture and other non-potable uses and treated water for domestic, municipal, and industrial use, including areas in the Disadvantaged Community of North Auburn and Western Placer County. Within its service area, NID serves a section of North Auburn’s residential population and commercial properties, including Auburn Faith Hospital (treated water). Currently, the primary source of water for the North Auburn Treatment Plant is the Rock Creek Reservoir (Reservoir) and the Bear River Canal System. The Combie Reservoir and the Combie (and Combie Ophir) Canal systems provide irrigation water for most of the North Auburn Area; and separately, the Rock Creek Reservoir and Bear River Canal system provides irrigation water to the southwestern portion of NID’s service area.
Problem
NID’s existing raw water system operates effectively under normal conditions to serve customers in the North Auburn Area; however, the existing facilities lack adequate redundancy. In other words there is not sufficient capacity for back-up or failsafe in the existing system to adequately respond to emergencies and drought conditions. The emergency water supply for upstream canal failures (Bear River Canal System) is through the Nevada Irrigation District’s Combie Canal. The existing Combie Canal System is very limited for an emergency supply and requires large reductions in existing customer water deliveries in order to provide a limited supply of water to the Rock Creek Reservoir and the two water treatment plants. This was particularly evident during the Bear River Canal failure of 2011.
Solution
This project will add a 3,750 foot intertie pipeline that will directly connect the Combie Canal to the Rock Creek Reservoir, which can be used during outages of PG&E’s Wise Canal, or Bear River Canal, or both. The project will improve NID’s ability to provide additional water supply during times of high demand and substantially improve system reliability, redundancy and NID’s responsiveness to drought, upstream canal failures and fire protection. As demonstrated by the April 19, 2011 canal failure, in the absence of the intertie pipeline, the only immediate alternative to upstream canal failure is trucking water and there is no back-up system for severe drought conditions.
The proposed intertie connection will provide much-needed back-up water supply deliveries for Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), which owns and operates Rock Creek Reservoir, and Placer County Water Agency, which delivers water to thousands of customers in western Placer County. Both PG&E and PCWA customers will also benefit from the increased system-wide redundancy proposed by this project.
Current Status (December 2016)
Planning and design is completed for this project. Construction contracting has been completed, and the bypass pipe is nearly installed.
Lead Agency: Nevada Irrigation District
Contact: Adrian Schneider, Senior Engineer, 530-273-6185, Schneider@nidwater.com
Measurable Physical Benefit: Water Supply
Watershed: Yuba
County: Placer